To borrow Mike Krzyzewski’s line, UCLA signed Owa Odighizuwa because it needed a big-name player.

Actually the first name is Owamagbe. And actually there were years when no one bothered to memorize all those syllables, when the UCLA program had no identity to steal.

“When I’d go up and watch him in high school I couldn’t take my eyes off him, with that body and athleticism,” Rick Neuheisel said.

“But all the top programs in the country had a guy who looked like that. We didn’t. That’s why he was such a top priority for us.”

Neuheisel was at the practice field Thursday, with ex-Trojan Curtis Conway and a full Pac-12 network crew.

For four years he put in hard time here, struggling to find quarterbacks, dealing with massive staff changes and systemic churn, and then trying to convince high school players that UCLA wouldn’t always be like that.

Odighizuwa believed him. It is clear that a lot of other good players did, too.

UCLA won 10 games last year, Jim Mora’s second as head coach, after Neuheisel was fired at the end of 2011.

It has its first legitimate Heisman Trophy candidate since Cade McNown, and has its toughest-looking Pac-12 games at home this fall.

It thinks it can be a Top 10 team, can put together a formidable campaign to get into the four-team College Football Playoff, can maybe play for a real national championship, 60 years after the Bruins won a wire-service poll.

“Maybe the top programs looked at Owa as something of a development guy,” Neuheisel said. “Our approach was to tell him he could be on the ground floor of something. It is turning out exactly that way.”

Odighizuwa came from David Douglas High in Portland and signed with UCLA in February of 2010. He turned down Oklahoma State and Nebraska, where another defensive powerhouse from Portland named Nkamadong Suh had found greatness.

He was a pass-rushing factor almost from the time he arrived, but he missed last year after operations on each hip, and Anthony Barr became the sackmaster and the No. 9 pick in the 2014 NFL draft. Barr leaves and a fifth-year senior with similar drive and honing instincts steps in. That’s where UCLA is today.

“It was tough to watch them last year but I got a new perspective on things,” Odighizuwa said. “I don’t look back at it as a missed chance. But those were two significant injuries, a tear on one hip and some fraying on the other, both in a three-month span.”

In his first start as a freshman he had two sacks against Cal, as he learned to “use pass rushing skills, not just to be an athlete running around.” In high school he had 22 tackles for loss as a freshman.

Three younger brothers follow him, two of whom were Oregon big-school state wrestling champs. They all play football, too.

But Owa was the patriarch. His mother Abieyuwa, known to everyone as AB, left his father when they were living in southwest Virginia. Owa was 10 at the time. The four boys and AB wound up in Portland, where AB had some relatives from Nigeria.

AB pursued a master’s in nursing. Owa pursued, when necessary, his younger brothers to keep them straight.

“She’s still my hero,” he said. “She held us together, she was the rock. As a kid you gravitate toward that support and foundation. She was very worried and protective, wouldn’t let us hang out with friends. Now I can see why she did that. And she was a stickler for academics, although I think I probably held myself to an even higher standard.”

Neuheisel and assistant coach Tim Hundley eventually convinced AB that UCLA would be comfortable for her first-born. AB and Susan, Rick’s wife, had a long talk at the Neuheisel home.

“The whole thing was how Owa would thrive in our environment,” Neuheisel said.

Now everyone thrives, Neuheisel included. Not surprisingly he is considered the largest personality on the Pac-12 Network, by those select few who are actual subscribers.

“It’s been a lot of fun,” he said, although he said it would be more fun to actually coach a team like this.

“I come out and see guys and remember being in their living rooms. There’s Brett Hundley progressing and growing, there’s Devin Lucien, and there’s Anthony Jefferson fighting his way back from injury and playing great football.

“Sure, it’s disappointing not to be on the same ride with them. But hats off to Coach Mora and his staff and the job they’ve done. When I see these players and how they’ve grown, it’s hugely gratifying for me.”

Winning is no accident. But it is never free from irony or coincidence.

Without the Pac-12 Network, FOX and ESPN money, UCLA would have struggled to keep Mora, to build the facilities he wants, or to pay his assistant coaches.

Without his injury Odighizuwa would have graduated already, would have missed whatever glories await.

Without redshirting Hundley as a freshman, Neuheisel might have survived as coach. Now he will be at the front of Hundley’s Heisman bugle corps.

Before he left on Thursday, Neuheisel went to the 25-yard-line of the practice field he once maintained was too short for a championship team. He and son Jerry, the backup quarterback, competed to throw passes against the crossbar, a bit for the network.

Jerry kept overthrowing, and Rick bounced one off the bar. Upon winning, he did not act as if he’d been there before.

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